It may already be well known but I didn’t see any threads relating to this recent change regarding PhotoBucket.

PhotoBucket recently changed their Terms of Service. Now it will cost you $400.00 dollars ($399.99 actually…) a year to be able to link to images to forums using their services. if you want to keep an old account showing the images you linked you will need to pony up the money since nothing is being grandfathered. Several threads @ M4T and UBI have already been rendered next to useless because of these changes.

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Last revised June 28, 2017
Types of Accounts, Pricing and Limits
Visiting : There is no cost to visit the Site or to register as a Member.
Free account : Each individual Member gets one free account that provides 2 GB of free storage or space available for your original photo files, or videos under 10min. The free account does not allow any image linking or 3rd party image hosting. If a free account Member exceeds their Content Limit, their account will be immediately suspended and they will need to become a “Paying Member” (defined below) in order to continue accessing their account. You can upgrade to a Plus account at any time.
Ad-free Account : The Ad-free Account offers Members the ability to use the Site without seeing any third party banner advertisements when logged into your Ad-free Account (note, viewers of your images within Photobucket will see ads unless they, too, have Plus accounts and you will continue to see Photobucket offers and announcements). This account level is available for $2.49 / month, payable by the Member on a monthly recurring basis.
Plus Account : The Plus Account offers several paid options that may give the Paying Member more storage, bandwidth, 3rd party image hosting, image linking and/or other services as outlined below. Once and during such period of time in which you subscribe to and pay for a Plus Account, we will consider you a "Paying Member." Please note that all Plus Account subscriptions are billed annually at the commencement of the service. Photobucket may also offer a monthly billing option for its Plus Accounts (see terms and restrictions, below).
Available Plus Account Plans : Photobucket offers the following Plus Account Plans:
Plus 50 Plan: 52 GB of Storage for $59.99 / Year. The Plus 50 Plan does not allow any image linking or 3rd party image hosting.
Plus 100 Plan: 50 GB of Storage for $99.99 / Year. The Plus 100 Plan allows for unlimited image linking but does not allow 3rd party image hosting.
Plus 500 Plan: 500 GB of Storage and unlimited bandwidth for $399.99 / Year. The Plus 500 Plan allows for unlimited image linking and unlimited 3rd party image hosting.
Additional Features of all Plus Accounts : When you upgrade to any Plus Account, you will also receive:
Premium Support. You have direct access to our tech support team. Email our PLUS Support Team
No Ads: When you're logged into your Plus account, you won't see any ads on Photobucket pages (note, viewers of your images within Photobucket will see ads unless they, too, have Plus Accounts and you will continue to see Photobucket offers and announcements).
Source: http://photobucket.com/terms

Luckily our forum software here will grab a local copy and rehost it on our storage automatically within each post - that includes Photobucket.com links as well (well, the first 20 per post or so). If people just post imgur or photobucket links then automagically it downloads a local copy, makes a nicer compressed version (for smaller storage and faster viewing) and then updates the original post. You don’t need to do anything to make it happen, it’s just done under the covers.

Hopefully that feature here (which we’ve had since day 1) will reduce ‘link rot’ that a lot of places can suffer from, when hosts disappear or images get removed.

I thought the MudSpike forum grabbed the images auto magically but I saw some posts before I started this thread where the photobucket upgrade image was being shown. With that neat feature protecting most images you are going to have fewer issues than most but it does seem you will still be affected by their changes.

michelv created a script that may be modifiable for those wanting to update their personal websites?

Last June, Photobucket quietly updated its terms of service. As a result, 3rd-party hosting of images is no longer allowed in the free or cheaper plans, only in the $399.99 a year plan. If you used Photobucket to host the images for your blog, the original images are no longer visible. Instead, a “ransom” image requesting you to upgrade your account is visible.

While Photobucket provides a way to download the original images, it is a time-consuming task to search, download and replace all images on your blog manually. PhotobucketScraper is a script to download all images to your server in the original folder structure.

If you use WordPress, the script can automatically replace all images for you.

If you use other software, you must replace the images yourself. Feel free to create an issue on the issue tracker. It might be possible to support your software. Please include the output of the script in your issue.

I saw this coming a long time ago. I used to be a member of a scale modelling group called Flory Models, and I took part in a number of group builds. I posted a large number of photo’s, all hosted at Photobucket.

I kept finding that my photo’s were disappearing from the posts and when I went to find out why, Photobucket were telling me they were getting too many views, and I needed to buy a ‘pro’ account if I wanted them to not disappear randomly.

I initially did that, but it wasn’t value for money and I went back to a standard account. I then entered a new group build and because of the particular model and how popular it was (an Su-25, would you believe!) the thread got a huge amount of views and Photobucket all but suspended my account.

I removed everything from there and moved it to either my own website or to Postimage - who are miles better in any case - but I still get all kinds of threatening emails from Photobucket about deleting the images that I actually don’t even have there any more!

I don’t expect something for nothing - I even pay Google for storage space in addition to the website I use for storage - but I don’t want to be ripped off, either. Can’t say I ever trusted Photobucket after that first episode, either.

PS: I just read that article and the lady from Photobucket is lying. She claims subscription accounts were introduced in 2014, yet the above described happened in 2012. So they have been trying to coerce people into paid accounts at least since then.

I guess this happens when you go business with an internet service. Step 1: Start with a free offer. Step 2: Achieve critical mass (e.g. make people addicted to your offer and lock them in so that they cannot easily substitute). Step 3: Cash out.

I’d be interested to know what percentage of Photobucket’s user base has ponied up $400 or simply jumped ship. $400 a year is a ridiculous price point if you are realistically trying to keep members. This seems to be a move towards a smaller, leaner model.

I moved over to Imgur several years ago when PB started compressing images. I still have a bunch of old photos in my ‘bucket’ though.